- Immigrant Times
- Sep 26
- 4 min read
Ali Akbar, Paris’s last newspaper hawker
President Macron awards a Pakistani immigrant with France’s Order of Merit
By The Immigrant Times’ Paris Correspondent*
Ali Akbar, in his seventies, continues to sell Le Monde in the streets of Paris’s Latin Quarter (Photo: REUTERS)
September 2025: In the heart of Paris’s Latin Quarter, where philosophers once debated over espresso and revolutionaries plotted beneath café awnings, one man still walks the streets with a satchel of ink-stained headlines. His name is Ali Akbar, who, for over fifty years, has been hawking newspapers in the centre of Paris.
Famous for his cheekiness and his habit of inventing headlines - like recently, ‘The Ukraine war is over, Putin asks forgiveness!’ – locals and tourists love him. And now, French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to make Akbar a Knight in the National Order of Merit (Chevalier de l'Ordre National de Mérite), in recognition of his dedicated service to France.
Ali Akbar was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in 1952 or 1953, into a large family of ten children. Two siblings died young, and Ali left school at age 12, working odd jobs and teaching himself to read. At 18, he set out on a journey that would span continents: through Afghanistan, Iran, and Greece, eventually landing in France in 1973 after a stint on a cruise liner that docked in Rouen.
His early years in Paris were marked by hardship, sleeping under bridges, facing discrimination, and taking whatever work he could find. But he refused to let poverty define him. “I didn’t want to wear clothes that reeked of misery.”
Ali began selling newspapers in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, starting with the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo outside the Sorbonne. At the time, there were around 40 newspaper hawkers in Paris. Today, he is the last. Known for his catchphrase “Ça y est!” (“That’s it!”), and his cheeky habit of inventing fake headlines to draw attention, Ali became a local institution.
When he started out as a hawker in the 1970s, Akbar focused on the sixth arrondissement of Paris on the left bank of the river Seine, which was a university area “where you could eat cheaply", he said.
On the rue Saint-Guillaume in front of the prestigious Sciences Po university, he recalled learning French from interactions with students like former prime minister Edouard Philippe and many others who became ministers or lawmakers.
“I have a certain way of selling newspapers,” he says. “I try to make jokes. So, people laugh. I try to be positive and I create an atmosphere. I try to get into people’s hearts, not their pockets.”
One Paris resident, The Immigrant Times’ Paris correspondent, spoke to, said: “Ali is an institution. I buy Le Monde from him every day. It’s not just about the newspaper, it’s about the connection. Sometimes we have coffee, even lunch together.”
Paris used to have about 40 newspaper hawkers, street vendors without a fixed newsstand, who were posted at strategic locations such as the entrances to underground stations. Ali Akbar stood out by choosing to walk around, selecting the Latin Quarter. In the 1980s, he started inventing sensational headlines.
In the 1970s, television began replacing print as the dominant news source. The internet accelerated the decline. Where Ali once sold 300 papers a day, he now sells about 40. “Everything is digital now. People just don’t buy newspapers,” he laments. Yet he persists, driven by love for the tactile feel of paper and the human connection it fosters.
In August 2025, President Emmanuel Macron, a former student who had purchased Le Monde from Ali, awarded him the Ordre national du Mérite for his contributions to French culture. “Maybe it will finally help me get my French passport!” Ali joked.
Ali now supplements his income with a small pension and a food truck near the Jardin du Luxembourg. He lives modestly, supports his family in Pakistan, and remains deeply grateful for the life he built in France. He married in 1980 and raised five sons.
Ali Akbar, in his own words
• I didn’t want to wear clothes that reeked of misery. I always dreamed of giving my mother a house with a garden.
• When you have nothing, you take whatever you can get.
• I have a special way of selling papers. I try to make people laugh. I want them to feel good, to create an atmosphere. I try to reach their hearts, not their wallets.
• Today, everything is digital. People just don’t buy papers.
• I just love the feel of paper. I don’t like tablets and all those things. But I do love to read. Real books. Never on screens.
* The article was written originally by The Immigrant Times’ Paris Correspondent in French.
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